January 16, 2008

Blocked!

Found this via my old buddy MacYapper:

Early Returns is rubbing its hands together with glee at the anticipated flood of city of Pittsburgh employees to this blog. Why so smug? Because this may be just about the only local political blog they can access from their work computers.

The city's Internet security provider, Websense Enterprise, recently updated its settings to eliminate access to "social networking and personal sites," a category that appears to include all of the "blogspot" addresses. Sources offer differing accounts on when this took effect, with some saying that as recently as yesterday they could access everything from the mayor-blistering Burgh Report to the call-em-as-I-see-em Pittsburgh Comet to the fawning (we think) I Luv Luke site.

And then there's this:

If a city employee or group of employees needs access to blogspot sites to properly serve the citizenry, they can have their department head e-mail him with a request to "open" that category for those users. They've done that for council offices researching gambling, and police units that need to access racy sites to fight sex crimes. So far, there's been a lot of griping, but no one has told him they absolutely need to read blogs to do their jobs, he said.

"If it's job-related, we'd be glad to open it up," Mr. Stern said. "There's no reason, otherwise, to expose my network to vulnerabilities and risks."

Think of this for a moment. Joe (or Josette) Smoe is sitting at a desk in the City County building wanting (for whatever reason) to read this blog. All employee Smoe had to do is to e-mail Mayor Luke's internet security forces with a request?

Think of what that will produce? A list of city employees who want to read political blogs!

For those people, I have a list of my own:

Surf in good health!

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